A Mankler's Guide to Driving A Junker

Shwankfelder is here to share some hilarious tips on lending your run-down ride some serious swagger.—Sparkitors

Having recently gotten my driver's license, I was faced with a major dilemma that many of us will experience: choosing "The First Car." This is a momentous time in a teenager's life, when the whole world seems to be only four wheels away. With a small budget and all of the Internet at my disposal, I searched for The One. What I came out with was a navy blue 1983 320i BMW. The e-brake was gone, the sunroof was broken, and my hood wouldn’t close—not exactly the vehicle I'd been dreaming of. So I came up with some tips to turn that old rust bucket into 100% pure swag.

1. Name your new friend. This is by far the most important step in this process. With no name, your car remains a creaky metal box, but with a name, it can live. Once you've dubbed your junker Larry, or The Duke, or Dynamite Stan, a bond will grow with every ill-intended smack of the dashboard or venomous kick to the wheels.

2. Accept and Love. Your car is full of flaws, but knowing exactly what's wrong with it is the key to hilarious self-deprecation. No knows your car like you do, so make these insults as customized as possible. Example:

Semi-curious-adult: How’s the old car doing?

You: Well, once I get the heat going with my flint, the brakes stop squealing enough so I can hear AM 980, the area's only Albanian radio station. That’s where the dial got stuck.

With quips like this, you'll never feel unprepared at any parking lot, during small talk, or at a competition for the worst car out there.

3. Be Creative With Repairs. Unlike others who spend 500 dollars every time their steering wheel cover tears, your repairs can be much more unconventional. If the bar is already set so low, why exceed those standards? Why not use a mixture of Krazy glue, Elmer’s glue and tacky glue to patch up some torn tubing around the window? A clothes hanger is a suitable solution for hooking one part of the head rest to the other. And that duct tape covering your cracking tan pleather interior doesn’t just have to be for decoration—people tend to classify these updates as “character.” Little do they know.

I hope these tips will help you throughout your driving experience. There’s nothing like your first car, and hopefully there never will be again.

Are you the proud owner of a clunky junker? Got any pointers for making it cooler?

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